Alexander I- the Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon

by Marie-Pierre Rey

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  Dimitri Lobanov Rostovski, a direct descendant of Prince Rurik, founder of Kievan Russia, belonged to one of the oldest noble families and had served under Catherine II. He left immediately for Tilsit, in eastern Prussia, to meet Napoleon, accompanied by Prince Kurakin, the former ambassador to Vienna. The latter was also an experienced aristocrat, who had served under Catherine II; he was close to Maria Feodorovna and kept her regularly informed41 (without Alexander’s knowledge) of the negotiations. For Alexander the time no longer belonged to young diplomats like Dolgoruki or d’Oubril, but rather to the old guard, and there was a significant change in perspective. Lobanov Rostovski was supposed to engage in talks “to put an end to the blood-letting” and to conclude an armistice without engaging precisely in peace talks, because the tsar feared that the latter would cost him heavy losses of territory. But at Tilsit the French emperor received Prince Lobanov Rostovski amiably, to the latter’s great surprise. Far from wanting to amputate the least parcel of land from Russia, Napoleon called for peace and even an alliance. For him, more than ever, the main enemy was England. Thus, on June 17 Napoleon sent General Duroc to contact Bennigsen about a peace process.

  Relieved and reassured about Napoleon’s intentions, and thus encouraged to purse negotiations, the tsar reacted rapidly to this proposal. In the instructions he sent to Lobanov Rostovski the following week, he insisted on the need for immediate and direct negotiations between the two sovereigns.

  You will express to emperor Napoleon how sensitive I am to all he has said to me via you, and how much I desire that a close union between our two nations may repair the past evils. You will tell him that this union between France and Russia was constantly the object of my desires and that I carry the conviction that it alone may ensure the world’s happiness and tranquility. An entirely new system should replace that one that has existed up to now, and I flatter myself that Emperor Napoleon and I will understand each other easily, provided that we deal with each other without intermediaries. A lasting peace can be concluded between us in a few days.42

  In response, Napoleon (by the intermediary of his faithful Berthier) repeated that he wished not only to conclude a peace treaty but also to form a real alliance with Russia. Two days after signing the armistice, the letters of ratification were exchanged on the night of June 23–24, and the first meeting between the two emperors was set for June 25. As an anonymous Parisian poet wrote:

  On a raft

  I saw two masters of the world

  On a raft

  I saw peace, I saw war

  And the fate of all Europe

  On a raft.

  I wager that England

  Would fear an entire fleet

  Less than this raft.43

  A lot has been written about the Tilsit meeting, including popular songs and poems like this one. The event has been subject to many and divergent interpretations due to its impact on Franco-Russian relations and on the future of the European continent. For some, the division of Europe performed there to the detriment of England and Prussia illustrates an understanding between two sovereigns who were equally ambitious and immoral. For others, Alexander was subjugated by Napoleon and had to suffer the ascendancy of a victor who could dictate his conditions. For still others, Tilsit was only a comedy played by two peerless actors: “Declarations of friendship, handshakes, embraces, fantastic projects for shared conquests,—everything was just the postponement of hate,” wrote Chateaubriand in a brilliant and murderous sally.44

  The difficulty posed for a historian concerned to understand what really happened in Tilsit is also due to the fact that despite the decorum and theatricality that surrounded an event that was skillfully staged, the reality of the meetings itself was lost to gazes and commentaries: “From the banks of the river, one could see the two sovereigns get onto the raft, enter by the two ends of the pavilion, embrace—and that was all. The rest was out of sight,”45 recalled General Paulin, present in Napoleon’s squadron, in his memoirs. Although few direct sources deal with Tilsit, the event quickly stimulated a variety of commentaries. In 1812, when a new war was approaching, both the Russians and the French indulged in a reconstruction of this pivotal event, aiming to justify their conduct at the time, and later Napoleon would offer his own interpretation in Las Cases’s Memorial of Saint Helena. Thus, Tilsit as a historical fact of prime importance was quickly raised to the status of myth—which complicates the historian’s task However, it is crucial to try to see it clearly, and once again the Russian archives, particularly the personal correspondence of Alexander offer us evidence for a fresh interpretation that includes how events unfolded, as well as the motivations, intentions, and goals of the tsar.

  On June 25 the first meeting took place, a tête-à-tête for two hours, between the two emperors on a raft floating in the middle of the Niemen River. For the occasion Napoleon was dressed in the uniform of his guards, hung with a cord of the Legion of Honor; he came first onto the raft, came to meet the tsar who had just disembarked and gave him an accolade; then the two men disappeared inside a pavilion decorated with their respective coats of arms. What views were exchanged at this secret meeting?

  According to Napoleon (as he recalled in his letter to Alexander on July 1, 1812), Alexander had at first proclaimed an anti-British determination, declaring that he detested the English as much as the French did and that he would be “his second against England.” Having thus put his interlocutor in the best frame of mind,46 Alexander said he wanted “to plead the cause of an unfortunate ally,”47 and obtained the right for the king of Prussia, excluded by the French from this first meeting, to be able to attend the second, planned for the next day, again aboard the raft. But this concession was purely formal because Frederick Wilhelm, openly despised by Napoleon, had to be content with witnessing the second meeting without being able to play the slightest role. The French emperor did not want defeated Prussia to participate in the dialogue between France and Russia.

  During their first meeting the two sovereigns observed each other, each trying to discern the other’s personality, in a duel of barbed but veiled remarks. The Russian wanted to obtain an honorable peace, the Frenchman wanted to seal a trustworthy alliance. Napoleon wanted Alexander to recognize the legitimacy of his titles and conquests in western and central Europe, to accept the dismemberment of Prussia, and to support him actively in his struggle against England. Meanwhile Alexander hoped to sign a peace treaty without lost territory, save the Prussian monarchy, and obtain free movement in relations with the Turks, without committing himself too far to an alliance.48 For almost two weeks Napoleon and Alexander had frequent conversations, while their diplomatic advisors worked frantically to prepare texts. The sovereigns’ conversations bore on strategic and geopolitical topics, but also on political matters. Alexander, as a worthy pupil of Laharpe, proclaimed his liberal positions, which surprised the French emperor. Later, on St. Helena, Napoleon would confide to Las Cases:

  Still, he was not without real or feigned ideology; this would be the remains of his education and his tutor. Will anyone ever believe, said the emperor, what I debated with him: he argued to me that heredity was an abuse of sovereignty, and I had to spend more than an hour and use all my eloquence and my logic to prove to him that this heredity was the refuge and happiness of peoples.49

  Alexander never gave a public commentary other than a purely diplomatic report on the Tilsit meetings. Still, several years later (1813), he returned in detail to his meeting with Napoleon in a conversation with Countess Edling:

  The emperor expanded warmly on this enigmatic character and told me of the study he made during the meetings at Tilsit. In this conversation, where there were no constraints, I saw how mistaken people were in supposing that Alexander had illusions about Napoleon. Obliged to recognize the superiority of genius, he accepted with good grace the great man’s advances, without ever letting himself be dazzled by false confidence. […] The emperor, in speaking of
Napoleon, could not defend himself from a certain irritation, but never so far as to utter a bitter or unmeasured expression. This moderation was quite rare at a time when one never heard the name Napoleon pronounced without some epithet resembling a curse. The emperor continued the conversation on this interesting subject and expressed himself as follows: “The current period reminds me of everything this extraordinary man told me at Tilsit on the fortunes of war. We talked for a long time, for he liked to show me his superiority and spoke complacently, letting himself go in imaginative sallies. He told me one day: ‘War is not as difficult an art as people imagine, and frankly it would be often embarrassing to say how one battle or another was won. The fact is that one got afraid last, and that is the whole secret, for there is no general who does not doubt the outcome of the combat and it is a matter of hiding this fear as long as possible. It is only by this means that one’s enemy is intimidated, and then success is not in doubt.’ I listened to everything he was pleased to tell me with profound attention, having decided to profit from this assertion in the next occasion.”50

  For these two weeks the two sovereigns showered each other with kind gestures and compliments, and the seduction seems to have been mutual. In a famous letter to Josephine, Napoleon confided to his spouse: “My dear, I have just seen emperor Alexander and I am very pleased with him, he is a very handsome, good and young emperor. He is more intelligent than it is commonly thought.”51

  Later he concludes frankly that “if Alexander were a woman, I would make him my lover.”52 For the tsar’s part, he says he was impressed by the “genius” and charm of the emperor and listens with apparent admiration to Napoleon shine in their conversations. But if he gave the appearance of appreciating the mind of the French emperor and applauding his sparkling chat, if he flattered him, Alexander remained lucid and aware of the important stakes at play in Tilsit and of his own vulnerability. The negotiations had been imposed by circumstance and did not change his diplomatic priorities in any way. Far from being dazzled by the alliance that was on the verge of being concluded, he remained viscerally hostile to the one who continued to call himself in private correspondence “Bonaparte” or “the Corsican.” On June 7, 1807, when Alexander was still in Weimar, on the point of setting off for Tilsit, he wrote to his sister Catherine something that reflects his state of mind: “Bonaparte claims that I am only an idiot. He who laughs last laughs best! And I put all my hope in God.”53

  For Alexander, the usurper who had betrayed the ideals of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment and who for personal motives had thrown Europe into the torment of war, was a tyrant who had to be beaten as soon as circumstances allowed. However, he did not underestimate either Napoleon’s genius or political skill. Four days after his first meeting with the French emperor, he sent a letter to his sister Catherine in which he reported with excitement but with clear eyes about the extraordinary event he had just experienced:

  God has saved us: instead of sacrifices, we get out of the struggle with a kind of luster. But what do you think of all these events? Me, spending my days with Bonaparte, to be whole hours in tête-à-tête with him! I ask you if all that seems a little like a dream! It is past midnight and he has only just left. Oh, I wish you could have invisibly witnessed all that happened. Adieu, dear friend, I write to you rarely but on my honor I have not a moment to breathe!54

  A few weeks later, in one of the letters sent to his mother while still in Tilsit, again there was no question of succumbing to a Napoleonic mirage. On the contrary, the young tsar proved perspicacious, even cynical, wagering on the vanity of the French emperor and on his own capacity to play on it.

  Prince Kurakin echoes the tsar’s analysis in a letter to Empress Maria Feodorovna expressing his relief that, given the scope of the Russian defeat, there had been an unhoped-for recovery of the situation.

  Amid the anguish caused by our political situation, after the recent disasters of our army, from the cruelest worries we are now transported by the greatest joy. God was watching over Russia, over the person and glory of the emperor your son! Blood will no longer flow, the calamities that afflicted humanity and Europe as a whole will cease. Russia will have only to regret the brave troops she has lost, but their bravery has acquired a new glory and in recovering her tranquility she keeps all her power and all her borders. […] Your Majesty will deign to agree that nothing happier could have happened to us. Heaven has granted us a blessing and favor in the most critical period in which Russia has ever been found! Abandoned or not at all supported by our allies, we had to assume alone the burden of a war that we could only do with the effective help of England and Austria. We lacked money, provisions, arms; our troops, after the losses they had suffered, could only be revived at the expense of our population and still, new recruits would not have first replaced our old soldiers. We had before us, on our borders, a victorious enemy with three times the strength of ours, who had only to take a step forward to enter our Polish provinces where insurrection was smoldering and which were ready to receive it and rise up. What did we have to oppose it? The debris of a great army discouraged by all that the generals had made it suffer; total disorganization in our means and resources; no hope of success and no utility whatever in the sacrifices to which we could have stubbornly stuck! This picture, exactly true, where nothing is partial or exaggerated, suffices to make us feel how happy we are to finally exit advantageously from this painful and dangerous struggle in which we were engaged. I cannot doubt that Your Majesty shares my conviction about this.55

  In what respect did Russia leave advantageously from the struggle?

  On July 7, 1807, the Treaty of Tilsit56 was signed between France and Russia; two days later, a second treaty was concluded between France and Prussia. Negotiated by Princes Lobanov Rostovski and Kurakin on the Russian side and by Talleyrand, the Prince of Benevent, and the minister of foreign affairs on the French side, the treaty was really composed of two different documents: a treaty of peace and friendship that included 30 open articles and seven secret ones, and a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with nine articles, all secret.

  While, to the great relief of Russian negotiators, Russia had to concede no parcel of imperial territory, Alexander nevertheless did have to evacuate the river mouth in Dalmatia and the Ionian Islands that had been occupied by Russian troops,57 as well as the principalities of Moldavia and Walachia that he had just taken from the Ottomans. In parallel, the tsar did not manage to defend effectively the interests of Prussia, which paid a high price for the new Franco-Russian entente. In effect, Prussia lost most of its former Polish possessions, to the benefit of the king of Saxony, and all its lands situated to the west of the Elba, to the benefit of a new kingdom of Westphalia, which Napoleon had set up for his brother Jerome. The formerly Prussian part of Poland was henceforth the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Alexander had refused to annex to Russia the Polish land extending to the Niemen and Vistula, and so this new entity would be governed by the king of Saxony, a docile vassal of France.58 All of these amputations represented half of Prussia’s population (5 million out of 10 million) and a third of its area, so badly mutilated was the country after Tilsit. Moreover, it had to suffer occupation by French troops until it had paid war reparations imposed by the victor. Still, the efforts made by Alexander I in favor of his ally were not completely in vain: as article 4 of the treaty stated, Napoleon “out of regard for his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, and wanting to prove his sincere desire to unite the two nations by ties of trust and inalienable friendship,”59 agreed to restore to Frederick Wilhelm the boundaries that pertained in 1722, which meant Pomerania, Silesia, and part of Brandenburg. The city of Danzig was declared free on the model of Hamburg and placed under the protectorate of Prussia and Saxony; the territory of Byalistok was taken away from Prussia and fell into the Russian lap; finally, some Prussian land east of the Elba was confiscated under the treaty and given to Westphalia. Although not as effective as hoped, Russian help w
as not negligible: on June 30 King Frederick Wilhelm expressed his gratitude to his ambassador in Vienna:

  Emperor Alexander sincerely shared my excruciating position and took it upon himself to plead my cause. I must render him the honor that he gave me on this occasion with the most touching proofs of his personal friendship and his participation in the fate of my monarchy.60

  Obliged to ratify these major territorial changes, Alexander had to accept a certain number of more political clauses: he had to recognize the Confederation of the Rhine and the new kingdom of Westphalia; he had to recognize Napoleon’s older brother (Joseph) as king of Naples (heretofore Russia had been allied with a Bourbon king on that throne), to accept French mediation in the war against the Ottoman Empire, and finally, to engage in an alliance both offensive and defensive against England. Indeed, the secret alliance called for the two allies to make common cause either on land or sea against their enemies; in particular, Russia promised to act in concert with France against England in the event the latter refused Russia’s offer of mediation. Finally, Russia was obliged to participate actively in the continental blockade, which meant the closing of all Russian ports to British ships and to imports from England.

  In the course of negotiations, two other topics were raised: the Polish question, temporarily solved by the creation of the duchy of Warsaw, and the Ottoman question, more complex and a source of dissension between France and Russia. Napoleon had vigorously asserted his refusal to cede Constantinople to Russia (“Constantinople is the world’s empire!”61 he exclaimed), but he had also implied (at Alexander’s insistence but not in writing) that he was not opposed to a future settlement between the two empires of the Ottoman question, which Alexander hastened to interpret as a blank check written to him.

  The balance sheet of the Tilsit treaties appears deeply ambivalent on the Russian side. Admittedly, Alexander had saved the peace, and without ceding any part of imperial land, two crucial points for him. He had saved his Prussian ally and avoided its worst fate, a protectorship of the kingdom of Prussia. And by accepting the principles of zones of influence dictated by Napoleon, he had raised the geopolitical status of the Russian Empire. But he had to recognize French hegemony in central Europe and accept evacuating the Balkan principalities—without getting any acknowledged legitimacy for Russia to supervise Turkish affairs (except verbally), and he had to promise to enter into an alliance that made England the new enemy of the Russian Empire, thereby contravening years of bilateral friendship.